The measurements box doesn’t perform calculations.
The only one it seems to do is simple divisions, provided that you use the same units as the current setting: 100/2mm when in set to mm —> result 50mm
Or 20/5" when set to " —> result 1’ 8"
Don’t expect any other calculations (yet, requested many times by many users).

I wasn’t so much expecting it to do calculations, just do what it does when you input imperial dimensions. I haven’t (but will) see what happens if I try 1'1" - not at computer at the moment but will try later tonight.

I think this is just a muddle. It recognises the unit characters (foot and inch marks, separately) but ignores a mixture of the two in a bizarre and confusing way, treating anything after the first mark as if no units mark is later appended*.

While this may be sort of logical, I think it is wrong, or at the very least, half-hearted and confused.

Surely it should either say ‘invalid length entered’ or calculate it properly. If you aren’t paying full attention, and just type in the value and get no feedback, you’ll THINK you have entered a valid and correct size, but it will be in mixed units and wrong.

And can’t see that it would be difficult to fix. There must already be a function to calculate decimal inches from feet, inches, and fractions: why can’t it be invoked whatever the user units are set to, by the code that parses lengths and treats some as invalid? The input is ‘valid’ as in meaningful, just calculated incorrectly.

EDIT.
[*Note from above. It does NOT ignore the inch mark if there is no fraction, I now find]

Sorry, I was guilty of not searching for past threads first - I got so irritated by the behaviour I just let off steam! I’ve never directly noticed it before, and in over a year’s worth of reading almost every thread on this forum, don’t remember seeing anything like it mentioned in that time - but it may be a much older bug: I verified it only in 2016 and 2017 on Mac.

Yes, I found something like that too. It’s a right muddle. And SHOULD be easy to fix - the code to interpret lengths properly exists in Imperial unit models, so it can’t be difficult to add or adapt for metric unit models.

… and in over a year’s worth of reading almost every thread on this forum, don’t remember seeing anything like it mentioned in that time - but it may be a much older bug:

I was referring more generally (as Wo3Dan did) to long standing requests about the VCB’s behavior, quirks and shortcomings.

I’ve been involved heading toward 10 years now, in at least 3 official SketchUp forums and 2 editions of SketchUcation. There have been numerous complaints and requests (over the years) with regard to how the VCB (Measurements) control works, and doesn’t.

john_mcclenahan:

Sorry, I was guilty of not searching for past threads first …

No problem, you’ve explained the issue quite well, and better than most could.

Well more than likely, the other threads are in the general SketchUp topic where it’s just a normal question on how the VCB works or reads units characters. We tend to accept it’s quirky behavior as it is the way it was designed, so is not exactly a “bug”.

I’m on your side. But the mode of operation in the past for SketchUp development, is that a “bug” is something that is unintended. I have had several bug reports rejected over the years, because the issue was working as intended (or the way the programmer wrote it.) No amount of arguing that the feature should never have been designed that way, has gotten the report accepted. Usually I’ve had to resubmit the “issue” as a feature request to change the feature’s behavior, and sometimes I’ve just let it drop as I didn’t wish to waste any more time on it.